ODG R-6 Smart Glasses to Assist NASA Astronauts on Mission

San Francisco based, Osterhout Group (ODG) is stepping into virtual and augmented reality industry. Their first batch of customers? The Astronauts at NASA!

The company has been a military contractor for many years prior to entering the consumer market. ODG revealed their consumer augmented reality glasses and the R-6 Smart Glasses.

Virtual Reality Reporter had a chance to try on the ODG R-6 AR glasses at CES this year. We must say that the screen resolution, user-interface, and overall experience were the best out of all the AR glasses we’ve tried and tested.

However the R-6 is not cheap, the industrial-grade augmented reality glasses is priced at $4,946 USD running on Android platform. The consumer version is scheduled to release later this year and will be available for about $1,000 USD. The price is not very competitive compare to Samsung Gear VR at $199 USD.

This week NASA announces that they have contracted with the Osterhout Design Group, and will be using the ODG smart glasses in their future space missions. The ODG smart glasses would be utilized for training here on Earth as well as in space, in an effort to allow implementations of hand-free functions to be performed more efficiency.

Currently, astronauts reply on printed instructions as guidance to their tasks, such as maintenance equipment. In the future, astronauts will be able to receive critical information and instructions directly onto their AR glass to decrease the need to search for instructions.

ODG’s R-6 Glass will assist Astronauts on their space mission in the near future. NASA Johnson Space Center Engineering Director Lauri Hansen noted that the application of AR glasses would assist astronauts with evolving demands and replace paperwork.